Paper 07

A REVIEW ON TRAITOR TRACING SCHEMES

Antonius Cahya Prihandoko, Hossein Ghodosi, Bruce Litow

Abstract. Traitor tracing scheme is a copyright infringement detection system which works by tracing the source of leaked information. This scheme is implemented in a content distribution system, where legitimate users are registered and the content is only distributed among them. In many cases, however, legitimate users may aid a pirate; retransmitting content or any compromised keys to unauthorized users. Such dishonest users are called traitors. To be effective, a traitor tracing scheme has to be designed according to the piracy strategy that it aims to counter. Naturally, there are two strategies that are likely used by the traitors to facilitate illegal access to the encrypted content. Firstly, the traitors may attempt to extract the decryption keys to construct a pirate decoder. Secondly, they may legally decrypt the content and then illegally redistribute the decrypted content for their own benefits. The first strategy is the most likely to rise, but mostly countered by static schemes, in which the tracing mechanism is activated when a pirate decoder is found. The dynamic tracing scheme and its improver, the sequential scheme, promise a more efficient tracing than the static ones. However, they are designed to counter the second piracy strategy, which is likely rare. This paper provides a review on traitor tracing schemes to counter both piracy strategies.